Launched today after building for 3 years!
For the past 3 years I've been building Vendure - an open-source headless e-commerce framework for developers.
As is so common, I started it to scratch my own itch - my family's online shop needed an update and I was disappointed with the lack of modern tooling for e-commerce development.
So I started building. With zero marketing beyond a Twitter account, I now have a ~900-strong Slack community, 2k+ stars on GitHub, and Vendure is being used in dozens of production projects, including a huge Europe-wide streetwear marketplace (Klekt).
Today I launched v1.0. Now the exciting part begins!
More details in my announcement blog post: https://www.vendure.io/blog/2021/05/announcing-vendure-v1.0/
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Great stuff Michael! The title was sort of click-bait for me because I was wondering why you'd build for 3 years without releasing anything but seems you've already built a serious community around your product and the first "release" is really the 1.0 release. Congrats!
It looks like your long term play is monetizing the open source project with paid plugins, but you also offer support plans. How has that been going? If your $0 revenue on your IH
product page is up to date, how have you been supporting this for the last three years?
Thanks!
Yes, the plan is the "open core" model. Ideally I want to create a low-touch, mainly self-service software licensing business, which I can then scale without requiring a lot of extra help. Support is not intended to be the main income source, but I include it because a) it helps with decision making when stakeholders think about risks associated with adopting the framework and b) even though it doesn't scale so well, some companies may be willing to commit significant sums for support contracts which makes it worthwhile as a sideline.
So in the blog post I mention that I started this project as a solution to my family company's need for a new web shop platform. That's the answer to the funding question - the development of Vendure is funded by the family company right now, and I am simultaneously developing their new website based on it. It's a really nice position to be in because I have the space and time to do things right.
Great progress @michaelbromley! Looking forward to your posts. Keep us updated!
Thank you! Yes I'll keep documenting the journey here 👍